I have been digging into old forum posts and found a heated discussion dated 2016 about whether a main unpaved double track (often 4wd, linking villages, attractions) should be tagged as highway=track vs highway=unclassified: https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=53213&p=3
Not sure if anything had been decided and written in the wiki at the end, but at the time for safety reasons (@crsCR), general consensus was going towards highway=track.
I understand Chris’ concerns as I also do a lot of off-road surveys and improvements, and because outdoor enthusiasts will always use OSM-based renderers we pushed and agreed to similarly have highway=footway used instead of highway=path for trail sections that are only suitable by foot and high-risk extreme sports.
However, today we have to deal with potential corporate vandalism and it wouldn’t be fair to tell Facebook and Grab to stop tagging agricultural tracks as residential, to come up with clear and easy rules for minor road classifications, and then tell them we make ourselves exceptions for residential and unclassified because they are not suitable for a city car.
These roads between villages are not marked as paths because villagers use them regularly with their standard mountain vehicle: a high clearance pickup truck (and most of the cheaper versions are not 4WD).
Yes, some sections may become impassable during the rainy season due to extremely slippery conditions, but these are at the end the main roads linking villages, and unlike adjacent agricultural tracks, they will be often improved during the year, steep sections are or will be paved over time. Many of these double tracks have now become fully or partially paved, as I experienced this myself many times in the last 18 months.
So the question is: who do we tag for? the locals or the city dwellers in their small sedan venturing out once a year in the mountains and most likely relying anyway on Google Maps?
Also, if the main tracks between villages were kept as highway=track, wouldn’t that mean that tertiary roads with rough conditions (e.g. Pai to Muang Noi in the north) would need to be also downgraded? Makes no sense to me.
Most renderers will only rely on highway tag and this is why highway=track has been abused to describe unpaved/4wd conditions instead of its actual function. When planning an off-road trip, it’s of course important to know where the dirt could be, but so is knowing where the main way between villages is.
Today, customizable renderers like Garmin, and OSMAnd allow to make that distinction.
So to conclude, I believe the latest minor road classification described in the wiki is still the best compromise in terms of safety, routing, and rendering, and that highway=track should continue to be used only for agricultural and forestry tracks that are not used for through traffic (to reach a settlement or attraction)
Do you agree or disagree ?